The Claw Hammer Deer

I had to leave early for work this morning and when I left the house it was still dark. While driving to the MARTA station, I rode with the window down, breathed in the cool morning air and watched the sun come up over the city. It was one of those glorious Spring mornings where everything just felt fresh and clean, even if it was Atlanta. For some reason, no matter how old I get, mornings like that remind me of my grandfather. Maybe it's just fact that Easter is around the corner, but it brings back memories of standing beside him at Sunrise Services atop Whitaker Cemetery, looking out over the Mills River Valley while Pastor Sitton read the story of Christ’s resurrection from the Gospels.

My Grandfather, or Paw as we grand kids called him, was a lot of things. A loving husband and father. A deacon in the Mills River Baptist Church and a believer in Jesus Christ. A fire chaplain and a farmer. But above all things I remember my grandfather as an outdoorsman. Of course by time I came along, he was long past his prime as a woodsman and hunter. Arthritis and thirty years of working at Cranston had taken it’s toll on his old worn out knees and by the time I was ready to hunt the steep slopes and narrow mountain ridges of our mountains, Paw simply wasn’t what he used to be.

But he always had a good story. Great stories. Stories about the old days, when he ran traps lines, cut timber and guided deer hunts at The Big Creek Wilderness Camp. Stories when he was a young man and chased whitetails all over God’s country.

One of the more infamous of his stories involves a claw hammer and one unfortunate whitetail doe.

As the story goes, one day Paw was out checking his trap line up on the North Mills River. It was during the early 1960’s, and what money Paw brought in from mink, coon and muskrat hides was an important supplement to the family income. Paw was just above the confluence of the North and South Mills River, checking one of the muskrat traps, when he heard a loud commotion coming from up river. It was the sound of a pack of dogs barking and moving fast in his direction. From the way the dogs where carrying on, Paw knew they had to be running a deer. So he slipped quietly out of the river and concealed himself in the bushes just along the waters edge. The barking grew louder and louder until eventually Paw could hear the splashing of water as well. The dogs were pushing the deer right down the middle of the river. Paw began to hear the splashing of a single, large animal coming straight towards him. Suddenly a large doe came bounding down the river running for her life from the pursuing pack of hounds. The doe leaped right in front of the spot where Paw was hidden. When she caught sight of Paw, hiding in the bushes, she froze out of sheer shock. Obviously, she wasn’t expecting to see a man standing on the side of the river, just inches from her face.

Now of course Paw never said this, but I imagine that old doe probably looked up at my grandfather with eyes full of panic, as if to say, “Help me, dear sir. These dogs are after me and I’m so tired” And I’m sure, other individuals at that moment would have valiantly leaped into the river in front of the pursuing dogs and attempted to save the poor frightened deer.

But not Paw.

As the deer stood up to it's knees in the water, trembling in terror, Paw reached into the back of his hunting coat, pulled out a small metal claw hammer that he used to repair broken traps, and brought it crashing down right between the old does eyes-killing her deader than a door nail.

He then pulled her lifeless body up the river bank and loaded her into the back of his waiting pick-up, much to the chagrin of the barking dogs.

Now before any of you PETA or Humane Society nut-jobs out there get your panties in a wad and start thinking that my grandfather was some heartless killer, you need to consider that that particular deer meant food for his family. Back then, times were hard, and you got food where ever you could get it. Even if it meant knocking a whitetail on the head with a hammer like a Wack-A-Mole at the State Fair.

That’s one of the most important things my grandfather ever taught me-Killing an animal just for the sheer fun of it, is a sin. You always eat what you kill. (With the except of groundhogs of course)

I have no doubt, that my grandmother whipped up some of her usual culinary magic and prepared that doe into one heck of a feast for the Bryson clan. As of this writing, I’ve killed deer with rifles, shotguns, bows and arrows. I’ve even killed a few with a pocket knife. But I have yet to knock one down with a claw hammer. Paw’s still got one on me in that category.